The contention that Hamas is Israel’s latest and perhaps only remaining red herring, the culmination of its “war on terror” or terrorist-victim propaganda (see the documentary, Peace, Propaganda, and The Promised Land: Part I and Part II), which is intended to avoid peace negotiations, comes home in this article by Michael Scheuer, Bringing the Arab-Israeli War Home.
The strategy contended here is that Hamas permits Obama to avoid the conflict, as Clinton and Bush II did, possibly until the last year of his second term, guaranteeing failure. Failure means the Palestinians missed another opportunity in the land for peace formula (read, deceit).
In the meantime, while Palestinians are dying in Gaza by the hundreds, Palestinians also keep dying in the West Bank and East Jerusalem protesting the continuing confiscation of their lands. The
International Solidarity Movement site provides weekly updates on Israel’s colonialism in the territories, which reveals that the cement has never stopped flowing, not even interrupted by the Gaza action.
Here is Scheuer’s view of the purpose of the Gaza invasion:
There should be no mistake among Americans about what is going on in Gaza. Although Israel has billed its invasion as an attempt to destroy Hamas and thereby protect Israelis, its main goal is to ensure that Obama is tied as tight as Gulliver to the status quo of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world. In addition to hurting Hamas, Israel’s invasion of Gaza was designed to and has successfully underscored the salience of Osama bin Laden’s now 12-plus-year-old message to the Muslim world:
First, that the United States – under Republicans or Democrats – will allow Israel to do anything it pleases in regard to starving and bombing the Palestinians. This has been underlined for Muslims by the words of President George W. Bush, the silence of President-elect Obama, and, according to the Jerusalem Post, by the blame-it-all-on-the-Palestinians visits of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Congressman Gary Ackerman, and leaders of major U.S. Jewish organizations.
Second, that the ruling Muslim regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere are impotent “agents” of the Zionists and Crusaders and will do nothing to protect Muslims when they are attacked by the U.S.-led West, be those attacks in Palestine, Pakistan, Iraq, or Afghanistan. “[The] failure of the Arab foreign ministers at their meeting in Cairo to take any position to confront the continuing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip,” explains the independent and influential UK-based Arabic daily Al-Quds al-Arabi, “confirms the theory that says the Israeli aggression has come as a result of coordination and the blessing of influential Arab states, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”
Third, that Muslims are regarded by the West as subhumans, and their blood, lives, and children are – for America, Israel, and Europe – worthless and expendable. The Gaza score to date will indelibly make this point across the Islamic world: to date, 500 dead and 2,300 wounded Palestinians and less than 10 dead Israelis. As Pakistan’s Frontier Post has said, the West silently watches as “Israel is set to starve the Palestinian Muslims into nonexistence. … No respect for Muslim life! Muslim blood is cheaper than water!”
After the Gaza invasion, Israel will have accomplished two vital goals. It will have reenergized Hamas, which will in turn renew the suicide bombings inside Israel that allow America’s Israel-firsters – including Obama’s IDF-veteran chief of staff – to portray their country-of-first-allegiance as the poor, put-upon innocent. It will also have produced the end of whatever slim hope there was of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement over the course of Obama’s term. What is likely to become known across the Islamic world as the “Gaza slaughter” will ensure the continued growth of the Sunni insurgency al-Qaeda leads and inspires. All told, Israeli leaders at the conclusion of the Gaza invasion will be able to more credibly quote President Bush and say that their “mission” has been accomplished.
So Israel needs Hamas, as a gift to Obama, who can use Hamas as a cover to continue American ineffectualness in attaining peace in the Middle East. And as during the previous Clinton and Bush II administrations, the cement will continue to flow in the Palestinian territories.
